Endurance racing at Silverstone: Up to now
05 September 2025Silverstone is a place synonymous with Formula 1. The championship’s first-ever race was held at the repurposed airfield on May 13, 1950 and countless other historic moments have been recorded since.
But Silverstone is also steeped in the tradition of endurance racing as well, a discipline built on stamina and strategy far beyond that in any single-seater category.
From the roar of Group C to modern-day prototype battles, endurance racing has played its part in shaping Silverstone’s identity.
The origins of Silverstone and endurance racing
Endurance racing first arrived at Silverstone in 1976, with the first ever six-hour event held at the circuit. Then, changes to sports car regulations in the late 1970s heralded the start of what many consider to be one of motorsport’s most revered eras. Group C.
Legendary marques like Porsche, Lancia, Jaguar and Mercedes turned Silverstone into one of the battlegrounds of the World Sportscar Championship.
Owing to a pre-Le Mans spot on the calendar, the Silverstone 6-Hour and the 1000km of Silverstone quickly established themselves as unmissable endurance racing events – where legendary marques like Porsche, Lancia, Jaguar and Mercedes got their ducks in a row ahead of the 24-hour race – turning Silverstone into a key battleground of the World Sportscar Championship.
The FIA-backed World Sportscar Championship continued racing at Silverstone until 1992 and helped to define endurance racing’s place in Silverstone’s history.
When the rebranded FIA World Endurance Championship returned to Silverstone in 2004, it was the turn of Audi and Peugeot to battle it out for honours in the LMP1 category, in an era that rekindled some of that old magic.
The most recent WEC visit came in 2019 and it was the Toyota Gazoo Racing line-up of Mike Conway, Kamui Kobayashi and José María López who took the honours less than two seconds ahead of the sister car.
European Le Mans Series: The reunion
2019 was also the last time ELMS raced at Silverstone. Having featured on all bar two season schedules since the formation of the championship in 2004, the circuit has been part of its evolution through various guises (Le Mans Endurance Series, Le Mans Series and European Le Mans Series) and was often the season-opening or season-closing event.
The series always delivered superb racing and strategic intrigue in the past, and fans relished the chance to see diverse grids of prototypes and GT cars up close in a paddock that offered rare accessibility.
ELMS’ return to Silverstone for the first time in six years will once again allow UK fans access to some of the best endurance racing the world has to offer, and write the next chapter in Silverstone’s storied history of the discipline.
